()blivion
Active Member
So, I'm cruising YouTube looking at some of the interesting things people have done with their RasPi's, trying to get ideas for my own, and I come across this video and a few others like it...
Looking past the minor sin of bringing a metal tipped object fairly close to bare and live circuitry, right off the gate I'm thinking, "you're doing it way wrong". As can be plainly seen, this person has a Pi, attached to a break out, attached to a bread board, attached to a Arduino, all for what should be the simple and easy to achieve task of moving a servo. That alone wouldn't bother me, I see this kind of unnecessary over complication all the time. And people can do whatever they want with their money + free time. Doesn't hurt me one bit.
The thing that did bothered me though, was that he is selling it as "simple". Granted, he does say multiple times that the alternatives "seem more complicated" as if he is not completely sure his way is the simplest. But still, it baffles me how one even thinks that it is somehow simple to chain thing to thing to thing to thing like that? Especially when the first and last thing are mostly the same thing (an embedded system). His way of doing the task reminds me of those cartoon contraptions where the fan blows the kite that pulls the string that trips the mouse trap that flips the dominos that hits the matchbox car that... you get the idea.
Well, I decided to set out to do it with as little actual "doing" and time as possible (I'm really lazy). I mostly did it because getting the Pi for essentially free from these very forums feels a lot like a small loan of good faith with 10x interest I should pay off to the world. But largely also because I can make use of such things, and it gives me an excuse to play with my newest toy. (^_^)
I don't consider myself good with software at all, and even so I figured out how to do the task with just the Pi in no time. Certainly not as hard to do a task as the video author was expecting. I currently have it working fine with just the Pi, three resistors, and one transistor (and power + servo of course). The code is still unpolished so I am going to work on that a bit more before I post it. But really, when I got my dev setup working (thanks Cboard) it took me realistically like 13~16 hours time on task to do it, and 90% of that was prep work and time spent navigating a search engine just figuring out how to make it work. Now that the code is almost done, it will be copy paste for the rest of the world. With the download, it would take the odd onlooker 30 minutes if he/she can solder and has resistors and transistors already.
Honestly, write one little C CLI app, and build a simple 3-5V transistor buffer. Not that hard. And will be 10x easier when you can just download it from me when it's done too.
(I would upload the video I took a little while ago of it working, but my video recorder is actually a cell phone with the stereotypical embarrassingly bad quality. You're better of with your imagination, more fidelity that way honestly.)
Looking past the minor sin of bringing a metal tipped object fairly close to bare and live circuitry, right off the gate I'm thinking, "you're doing it way wrong". As can be plainly seen, this person has a Pi, attached to a break out, attached to a bread board, attached to a Arduino, all for what should be the simple and easy to achieve task of moving a servo. That alone wouldn't bother me, I see this kind of unnecessary over complication all the time. And people can do whatever they want with their money + free time. Doesn't hurt me one bit.
The thing that did bothered me though, was that he is selling it as "simple". Granted, he does say multiple times that the alternatives "seem more complicated" as if he is not completely sure his way is the simplest. But still, it baffles me how one even thinks that it is somehow simple to chain thing to thing to thing to thing like that? Especially when the first and last thing are mostly the same thing (an embedded system). His way of doing the task reminds me of those cartoon contraptions where the fan blows the kite that pulls the string that trips the mouse trap that flips the dominos that hits the matchbox car that... you get the idea.
Well, I decided to set out to do it with as little actual "doing" and time as possible (I'm really lazy). I mostly did it because getting the Pi for essentially free from these very forums feels a lot like a small loan of good faith with 10x interest I should pay off to the world. But largely also because I can make use of such things, and it gives me an excuse to play with my newest toy. (^_^)
I don't consider myself good with software at all, and even so I figured out how to do the task with just the Pi in no time. Certainly not as hard to do a task as the video author was expecting. I currently have it working fine with just the Pi, three resistors, and one transistor (and power + servo of course). The code is still unpolished so I am going to work on that a bit more before I post it. But really, when I got my dev setup working (thanks Cboard) it took me realistically like 13~16 hours time on task to do it, and 90% of that was prep work and time spent navigating a search engine just figuring out how to make it work. Now that the code is almost done, it will be copy paste for the rest of the world. With the download, it would take the odd onlooker 30 minutes if he/she can solder and has resistors and transistors already.
Honestly, write one little C CLI app, and build a simple 3-5V transistor buffer. Not that hard. And will be 10x easier when you can just download it from me when it's done too.
(I would upload the video I took a little while ago of it working, but my video recorder is actually a cell phone with the stereotypical embarrassingly bad quality. You're better of with your imagination, more fidelity that way honestly.)
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